Should we try to avoid nightmares even if we don’t remember them?

[Content warning: Might induce anxiety]

I am still making my way through Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons. The sixty-fourth chapter Past or future suffering concerns itself with a thought experiment, which produces implications I want to discuss.

I am in some hospital, to have some kind of surgery. Since this is completely safe, and always successful, I have no fears about the effects. The surgery may be brief, or it may instead take a long time. Because I have to co-operate with the surgeon, I cannot have anaesthetics. I have had this surgery once before, and I can remember how painful it is. Under a new policy, because the operation is so painful, patients are now afterwards made to forget it. Some drug removes their memories of the last few hours.

I have just woken up. I cannot remember going to sleep. I ask my nurse if it has been decided when my operation is to be, and how long it must take. She says that she knows the facts about both me and another patient, but that she cannot remember which facts apply to whom. She can tell me only that the following is true. I may be the patient who had his operation yesterday. In that case, my operation was the longest ever performed, lasting ten hours. I may instead be the patient who is to have a short operation later today. It is either true that I did suffer for ten hours, or true that I shall suffer for one hour. I ask the nurse to find out which is true. While she is away, it is clear to me which I prefer to be true. If I learn that the first is true, I shall be greatly relieved.

The point is that most people would prefer more suffering in the past to less suffering in the future, even though they are the same person experiencing the pain.

Parfit uses this example to argue that a moral theory that places more weight on the future versus the past is not irrational, in a larger attempt to defeat a moral theory that prioritizes the advancement of self-interest. This is a very interesting topic and I hope I get around to writing about it someday, but now I today to discuss something else, the effects of the anaesthesia. The inclusion of the sedation is a clever trick to let us disregard the consequences the painful memory might have on our well-being. We, rarely, in a hospital, encounter a situation as above, where we feel intense suffering in the moment but will not be able to remember it afterwards. However, we encounter such a situation in our daily lives, in the form of dreams. Like many, I have occasional nightmares. Luckily, I usually remember them only haphazardly and the ones I remember upon waking up I tend to forget within minutes. Therefore, these dreams have no negative effect on my well-being while awake. Still, it seems surprising that avoiding nightmares does hardly seem to play into most people’s considerations. After all, nightmares might feature prolonged episodes of intense fear, personal tragedies and profound suffering. Should I not make an effort to try to relieve my sleeping self from these pains even if my waking self is not impacted by them? After all, morally, I should also try to alleviate a stranger’s suffering even if I can not remember it. It might be argued that there is a false equivalency because the person dreaming is still “me”. However, unless the concept of “me” is seen in a purely physical sense this might be hard to argue because the dream-me often acts very differently from how I act in real life and lacks fundamental qualities of my awake self.

Surprisingly, I found no discussion on the internet concerning the ethics of forgotten nightmares. Various websites offering tips to reduce them usually included the standard advice of practicing sleep hygiene, sorting your anxiety-inducing issues out during the day and avoiding stimulants, such as caffeine, close to bedtime. Still, I do think this is an under-discussed ethical issue and if anyone wants to nominate me for a professorship in normative ethics (Ivy League only), please leave a comment. For now, I will stop thinking about the issue, in order to reduce nighttime anxiety. I hope dream-me is forever grateful for this effort.